Putin Appoints Relatives, Friends' Children, Wives To Defense Posts

Appointment of relatives and the children of close allies to important positions in Defense reveals Kremlin worries regarding its war in Ukraine, especially if Biden is  reelected in November. 

Putin is protecting his power in case the war continues to go wrong, citizen anger grows and regime is threatened. JL

Nova News reports:

The reshuffle ordered by the Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Ministry of Defense is an operation aimed at placing the relatives of some officials in his circle in important government positions. “Putin (is) tring to present his children and the children of officials from his inner circle to the public, in order to create conditions for them to occupy influential positions in the Russian government.”

The reshuffle ordered by the Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Ministry of Defense is an operation aimed at placing the relatives of some officials in his circle in important government positions. This was reported by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an American study center that has been carefully monitoring the developments of the conflict in Ukraine for over two years, not only with regards to activities on the ground but also in relation to the political consequences in Kiev and Moscow. Putin yesterday removed from office four deputy defense ministers, viz Nikolai Pankov, Ruslan Tsalikov, Tatyana Shevtsova e Pavel Popov. They were appointed in their place Leonid Gornin, as first vice minister of Defense, as well as Anna Tsivileva, Oleg Saveliev e Pavel Fradkov. Tsivileva is the daughter of one of Putin's cousins ​​and the wife of the recently appointed Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilyov and president of the Defenders of the Fatherland fund, a state organization that supports the military. She also previously served as a member of the Council for Protection and Assistance in the Social Sphere under the Government of the Russian Federation in 2019. Tsivileva owns the Kolmar coal company and in August 2022 left her residence in Switzerland to move to Dubai and avoid the sanctions imposed on the Russian coal sector.

 

Pavel Fradkov, who until yesterday held the position of first deputy secretary of the presidential office, is the son of the former prime minister of the Russian Federation and director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (Svr), Mykhail Fradkov. Gornin, however, until now held the position of first deputy minister of Finance, while previously he had been simple deputy minister from 2012 to 2018 and minister of Finance and Fiscal Policy of the Novosibirsk region from 2010 to 2011. According to the ISW, the appointments of Tsivileva, Fradkov and Gornin “support Putin's recent efforts to introduce his relatives and children of other high-ranking officials to the Russian public,” as well as “to appoint economic advisors at the Ministry of Defense to improve the economy in conditions of war". Tsivileva and Fradkov attended the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg on June 6 and 7 together with Putin's daughters and the children of other high-ranking officials. Therefore, according to the ISW, “Putin probably tried to present his children and the children of officials from his inner circle to the public, in order to create conditions for them to occupy influential positions in the Russian government.”